Touch for Comfort Care    - by Judy Antonelli

 

Do you know someone with cancer and wish you could do more for them? Now, YOU can be an active participant in the recovery of that someone you know by helping to reduce the suffering of symptoms caused by medications, surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation treatments. By learning simple and safe ways to touch, YOU will help coax the body into relaxing and letting go of stress to a deep sleep. Needless to say interrupted sleep has a dramatic effect on the stress and symptoms in the body including pain. Now stress and pain alone cannot cause cancer, but some responses to stress, pain, and inflammation help cancer grow. When any one of these classic symptoms disrupts sleep, which, in turn, increases pain or anxiety, and has serious consequences; it causes fatigue, poor functioning, increases stress, blocks energy, and can therefore interfere with recovery and promotes a poor functioning cycle. Besides promoting sleep, Compassionate Touch helps the body work more efficiently on less energy, and in the end, the body heals faster with less complications, less medications, and the patients have expressed more energy as a result. This is why Massage has become the #1 Integrated Practice in clinical settings for managing pain and promoting sleep.

 

Out of popular demand, I started teaching a class called Oncology Massage for Caregivers last May at The Comprehensive Cancer Center in The Miriam Hospital located in Providence, RI. After caregivers watched me apply Touch for Comfort Care to their loved ones receiving chemotherapy. They saw for themselves, the heightened Fear and Anxiety melt away the emotions of their loved one and witnessed a profound physical change of comfort and ease in only a matter of minutes. Once I finished my session, most often the patients SLEEPING, and the caregiver pulling me aside and asking, “Please, can you teach me how you do what you just did… Please!” So please join me by helping to alleviate the suffering of cancer dis-ease. This class is a must for Family Members, Friends, Care Givers, Energy and Reiki Practitioners and anyone who cares for or loves someone with cancer.YOU already have in your hands and heart the potential for a truly healing impact in another’s life.You will learn adjustments for safety, comfort, and techniques for relieving symptoms such as PAIN, NEUROPATHY, NAUSEA, DEPRESSION, FATIGUE, helping to IMPROVE SLEEP PATTERNS. Specific precautions will be taught including what you can do to help comfort and what not to do to cause discomfort or injury. You will learn a skilled touch of massage, light acupressure, the speed, pressure, where and how to touch the body to ease, and help coax the body into relaxation in as little as 10 to 15 minutes. The end result is a feeling of renewed energy, revitalizing, and rejuvenating the body/mind to wholeness.

 

With this skill, you will help improve the QUALITY of LIFE for your loved one and your self. You will also receive information that supports a design of an individualized approach specific to the your loved one’s needs, type of cancer, stage, including appropriate massage pressure, areas to be massaged and areas to avoid so active tumor sites are not disturbed. Because of these details, it is most important to work closely with an Oncology Certified Massage Practitioner and this class is intended for use in partnership with your medical team and not meant to treat or diagnosis any medical condition. Also, even if you know someone now in remission, there may be current symptoms or lingering issues from the past treatments that oncology massage can address and help.

 

Judy Antonelli, RI & MA licensed, A Touch of Health in Riverside, RI, since 1991. Certified in Oncology Massage, she also works at The Adele R. Decof Comprehensive Cancer Center in the infusion room for out-patient, in-patient bedside, offers classes teaching Touch for Comfort Care - Oncology Massage for the Caregiver. She also teaches Yoga of the Heart - Gentle Medicine Movements for cancer, cardiac, and life threatening illnesses.